January 4th, 2044
11:00 AM
Central Ward
Horizon District
Nanbu Naoya
“Are you alright?”
Naoya’s Augur lit up with messages not long after he left FAIR Insurance’s office. He’d scarcely climbed onto his bike when the first one came in. He held up his Augur, and the screen displayed a blue message, though Naoya didn’t need to even look at the sender’s name to know who they were. It was from Suzume, his long-time girlfriend, who never missed an opportunity to check in on him.
“How does she know?” Naoya asked himself that question, but there was no answer, even though he’d asked it over and over these last ten years. Whenever something went wrong, Suzume knew it, no matter how small or meaningless the incident in question was.
“I’m fine,” Naoya assured her. He knew that putting up a tough front wouldn’t get him anywhere, but it was his nature to defend himself.
“Where are you?” came the next question, though Naoya suspected she already knew that, too.
“Iron District,” Naoya answered, though he couldn’t see much of it from his vantage inside the parking garage.
“You should go home and rest. It’s not healthy to be out on a motorcycle in the middle of a storm,” Suzume suggested the same course of action that Sakura had, though even in text form, Naoya read that with a more commanding tone.
“I’m alright,” Naoya assured his better half. “This is the ideal time to be working, anyway.”
“Oh really?” the simple question could be seen as conversational, but Naoya read it as a challenge. “How much money have you made?”
“I’ve got a healthy head start on this month’s rent,” he tried to come across as confident, though he knew he’d barely gotten anything done this early in the morning.
“I see,” rather than congratulate Naoya, or even challenge him, Suzume appeared to accept Naoya’s statement with a stoic reply, which was somehow worse, in his mind. He felt as though Suzume didn’t believe him, but she was so desensitized to the idea that she didn’t bother to question it, which made Naoya feel pathetic in turn. All too often, Naoya felt like a little boy lying to his mother, rather than Suzume’s equal. He hated that feeling.
“I’ve got a lead on a job that will pay off this month’s rent straight away,” before he knew it, Naoya was already promising to make up for his shortcomings before he’d thought it through.
“Really?” Suzume seemed surprised, so far as Naoya could tell. “Doing what?”
Her question was entirely natural, but it invited commitment on Naoya’s part to a job he wasn’t actually interested in pursuing. He sighed, knowing that it was too late to “unpull” the proverbial trigger at this point.
“Just a little debt collection, that’s all,” Naoya tried to downplay the dubious nature of the job in question.
“That’s not your typical gig, is it?” Suzume immediately noticed that Naoya was stepping out of his comfort zone. “Where did you get this job, anyway?”
“It’s just a one-time request from a regular customer,” Naoya continued to try and make things seem reasonable and casual.
“Who?” Suzume asked, though she swiftly discerned the answer to her own question. “Someone from Sin Ward?”
Suzume knew that Naoya ventured into Yōgai-shima’s red light district in search of work, and she rarely said anything about it. As protective and controlling as she could be, Suzume never seemed the jealous type. Perhaps that was the one area of their relationship where Suzume extended Naoya full trust, believing that he was beyond the reach of infidelity’s temptation. Or maybe, Naoya wondered cynically, Suzume would somehow know the moment he crossed such a line, just as she seemed to know everything else. He told himself that it didn’t really matter either way, as he had no desire to ever cheat on Suzume.
That said, there was still a sense of “disapproval” in Suzume’s voice whenever the topic of working in Sin Ward came up. She clearly didn’t like Naoya working there, but he couldn’t say whether she looked down on that sector of the city for its dirty reputation, or because she feared that Naoya would run into trouble in its more violent confines. She wasn’t wrong to be worried; he’d run into a dozen street thugs like Juzo who all saw Naoya as some kind of challenge because of how tall he was, regardless of how much Naoya tried to avoid confrontation. However, that was one of few secrets Naoya kept from Suzume. She’d put up enough barriers in his life, and he knew that if she found out he was getting grief from street thugs, she’d forbid him from crossing into Sin Ward entirely, and he couldn’t afford that.
“It’s just from a guy I know,” Naoya didn’t confirm or deny Suzume’s suspicions, but he doubted that the caginess of his reply was lost on her.
“This sounds like a lot of money for a single job,” Suzume observed, ignoring Naoya’s non-committal answer. “This guy isn’t dangerous, is he?”
“No,” Naoya was quick to answer. “He’s a prolific cheapskate who’s quick on his feet. Once I get a chance to talk to him, he’ll fold.”
“Assuming he can repay everything he owes out of pocket,” Suzume was quick to point out something that Naoya had overlooked. What if this guy really couldn’t pay? He could kiss that fifty thousand yen goodbye, that’s for sure.
“I’ll figure things out,” he assured her, and, for once, she didn’t argue.
“Take care of yourself,” she let that sit as the terminus of the conversation, and Naoya looked down at that final message, unfulfilled.
Conversations between the two of them had been tense for a while. Half the time, any discussion they had ended up turning into an argument. It made a part of Naoya afraid to even engage with Suzume, sometimes, but there was another part of him that wanted to call her. He wanted to hear her voice, not just exchange texts. He wanted to really talk to her and reconnect and maybe rewind back to happier days. If Suzume was a normal woman, that might’ve been possible.
But Suzume wasn’t a normal person by any stretch of the imagination. She was an Inspector; someone entrusted with responsibilities that Naoya couldn’t begin to comprehend. Lives depended on her and, for twelve hours a day, she was cut off from him, doing whatever it was the Bureau demanded of her. Even the brief conversation by text was more than he heard from her some days. Asking for more would be selfish.
He slid his helmet back on and raised his Augur, transforming the device back into a set of goggles which he stuck to his face. The engine hummed to life between Naoya’s legs, and he wheeled his bike around, bidding a silent goodbye to the FAIR Insurance Agency as he drove down the ramps that led back to the street.
He pulled out into traffic, cautiously leaving the parking garage with more reserve than many of the city’s other drivers. He looked around towards the office building he’d just exited, and noted that a car had appeared to have jumped the curb and struck the side of the building, which had no doubt caused the violent rumble that startled Naoya a few minutes prior. He shook his head, thinking of a few colorful words for the driver, but he pushed the thought to the back of his mind and focused on the day ahead. He was eager to be out of the Iron District, and away from the crushing grey walls all around him.
He spent the next few minutes simply driving on impulse, not consciously thinking where he was going. In short order, he found himself headed east again towards Sin Ward, as instinct propelled him towards his next goal before his mind had caught up. He made the return trip to Sin Ward without any eagerness, not happy to be about Ichinose’s business of shaking down negligent clients, especially when he couldn’t be guaranteed of any payment at the other end of it. He second guessed himself as he crossed the bridge over the Sunrise River back into the neon-lit pleasure center of the island.
Was he really helping anyone by doing this? The only person guaranteed to benefit was Ichinose; if Naoya was successful in finding the debt-dodging pervert in question, he may not have any money, and he could recompense the soapgirls he’d exploited. At best, he’d be scared away from the Virgin Sacrifice for good, but if the establishment was really hurting for money that badly, then it was doomed if the man couldn’t pay. But would that really be a bad thing?
Ichinose’s establishment was hardly a cultural landmark or the center of the community; it was a brothel in all but name, and a brothel that was barely treading water in a city of vices. It was a business that exploited women, in an industry that was all about the exploitation of women, and from what Naoya had seen, Ichinose was hardly a velvet-gloved tyrant in the way he ran his business. He was a sleazeball who treated his employees like garbage, and now, if Ichinose was being halfway honest, his business rested in Naoya’s hands, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
If the Virgin Sacrifice went out of business, the girls could get jobs somewhere else, and maybe they’d end up avoiding the dead-end life Ichinose had foretold they would all share. At the very least, they could find work at other soaplands out from under Ichinose’s thumb. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Ichinose was the only person who really stood to win or lose in this situation.
“And me, if he really has the money,” Naoya added, though the thought was far from comforting.
He didn’t like it from the off. He hated being thought of as muscle, and if he ended up using his strength, he’d prefer it was for a good cause, rather than do it for the sake of a low-level flesh peddler. Even so, he needed the money, and he’d already all but told Suzume he’d do it. More than that, if Ichinose could be trusted, this guy he was after already had other people sending debt collectors after him, which meant he’d get caught eventually. If he was going to do it, he told himself, he needed to do it now.
“Dial Ichinose,” Naoya spoke the words as his bike tore down the roads of Sin Ward, his actions once again already moving ahead of his conscious decisions. The Augur goggles immediately responded to his orders, and a small window appeared in the lens over his right eye, which featured the other man’s name and the word “DIALING” beneath it. The Augur rang twice before it was picked up.
“Hey-hey there, big guy!” Ichinose answered the call with an enthusiasm Naoya hadn’t heard from him before. “How’s it going?”
“Not Accident-kun, this time?” Naoya observed the man’s paper-thin good cheer. “He must really need this guy found.”
“That guy you mentioned,” Naoya brought up the topic of their prior conversation, which he imagined Ichinose was no less eager to talk about. “Is he still prowling around?”
“I keep an ear to the ground, and I haven’t heard a thing about him getting snatched up,” Ichinose reported, before coyly asking: “Why? You interested in my proposition?”
“I figure I’ll try and get this guy,” the words left a bitter taste in Naoya’s mouth as soon as they crossed his lips.
“Brilliant!” Naoya could hear Ichinose clapping in self-congratulation over the line. “Money talks, huh?”
Ichinose poked at Naoya’s motives, and Naoya had a powerful desire to hang up the call and just forget the whole situation, but he resisted the impulse.
“If you want me to catch him, you’ll need to send me everything you have on this guy,” Naoya tried to put himself in the mind of a hunter, as strange as a thought that was. “I need his name, a picture, where he goes. Everything.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ichinose didn’t seem remotely flustered by the request. “I’ve got what you need. Just cool your jets for a second.”
Naoya slowed his bike and pulled over to the side of the street, taking shelter from the rain beneath an awning that extended from the side of a building. He pried the goggles from his face, and the device shifted back into its phone form as he held it. He sat on the back of his bike for several long, impatient seconds as thunder rumbled overhead and cars sped by, their wheels sloshing on the soaked roads. Eventually, his Augur chimed, and the device projected a yellow screen as Ichinose sent him the information he requested.
A number of different windows opened on Naoya’s omni-tool, and he was momentarily taken aback by the amount of information he’d been sent. One window popped up after another, and Naoya fingered through the different screens, trying to organize the files he was sent. His eyes skimmed over a map of the city, and then he pushed a text file to the side, focusing instead on an open window that showed several pictures of the man in question.
The man in the picture wasn’t what Naoya had imagined when Ichinose described the infamous sex-pest. The man had a long face with bright skin, high cheekbones, and a square chin, with a pair of focused, dark eyes and a head of neatly groomed hair black hair that was going slightly grey. Even in the photo, Naoya sensed a man of reserve and authority, when he’d been picturing some overweight, balding horndog. Appearances weren’t everything, he reminded himself, and a man had desires, no matter how well-groomed he might seem.
Flicking through the pictures, Naoya observed several shots of the debtor, almost all of them from an overhead position from an indoor camera. The man was dressed often in a dark grey trench coat over a black suit, a retro article of clothing but not completely out of place considering the current weather. Though Naoya couldn’t see too much of the man in the grey coat’s surroundings, the floors and lights of each establishment seemed to be bars, restaurants, casinos, and other scenes from Sin Ward’s nightlife. However, Naoya noted that none of the pictures seemed to match the inside of the Virgin Sacrifice.
“Who is this guy?” Naoya asked, feeling as though he’d taken a step forward, only to find himself teetering on the brink of an unexpected pit.
“He’s the guy I told you about,” Ichinose was hasty to assure him, perhaps, too hasty.
“What’s his name?” Naoya asked and Ichinose scoffed.
“It’s in the files.”
“Shouldn’t you know?” the gap in Ichinose’s knowledge told Naoya something.
“In the suds business, we aren’t big on names,” the manager seemed almost affronted by the question. “What we care about is money. As long as you have that, we don’t ask for names.”
“Bullshit,” Naoya couldn’t fight the doubt crossing his mind. He shuffled the open windows showing the man’s pictures to the back and brought up the text file. He skimmed the page, some of which was detailed, while other passages were written in shorthand with questionable grammar and slang. The various entries on the page appeared to have been written by multiple authors, each one documenting alleged sightings of the man himself along with pictures taken from a distance.
“Nishijima Tatsuki,” Naoya read the name from the list and swept the picture back up, trying to commit the man’s features to memory.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Ichinose suddenly agreed. “Didn’t I say that?”
“What’s the map for?” Naoya asked as he brought the final screen up, which showed Sin Ward spread out from east to west with the fringes of Central Ward and Harbor Ward at either edge. Across the boroughs, various bulletins had been placed. The small beacons ran across Sin Ward from end to end, highlighting different businesses. The bulletins in the northern edge of the city were a dark grey color and marked with a red X, while the markers never strayed further east than the White-Mountain Sanzu that separated Sin from Harbor Ward, which left flashing red beacons across the west and south part.
“See all those little lights?” Ichinose referenced the digital display that Naoya was scrutinizing. “Each of those is a dive that this guy likes to frequent. All the high-class places up in Desire have been picked over. That just leaves all the nightclubs down on this side of town. All you need to do is pick a spot and wait and see if he shows up.”
“What about all the other spots?” Naoya demanded, trying to count up all the businesses that were still left. “How many other people do you have looking for this guy?”
“Just one, Nanbu-kun!” Ichinose balked, affecting a tone of betrayal. “You know you’re my main guy! But I keep telling you, this is an all hands-on deck kind of thing, man. You’ve got half of Sin Ward looking for this guy. He’s got a tab in every flesh bar in the city and a thousand people looking to collect.”
“If this guy’s blowing this much cash all over the city, then there’s no guarantee he’s got the money to pay you back,” Naoya observed, voicing his doubts in the tall tale he’d been told.
“Listen, Nanbu-kun,” the manager’s voice dropped to a soothing, pacifying tone that only made Naoya feel dirtied, somehow. “I’m giving you my guarantee. Cross my heart, and all that. You bring this guy to me, and I’ll give you every single yen I promised you.”
Naoya didn’t exactly put much stock in Ichinose’s promises, but he chose not to voice his distrust, if only to avoid listening to Ichinose try and cajole him into doing his dirty work some more. There were more important things to do right now; if Naoya had any hopes of catching this “Nishijima,” then he needed to act fast. There were already who knows how many men looking for the same man, and they had a head start.
“I’ll hold you to that,” Naoya promised the other man, and he immediately ended the call. He spurred the motorcycle into motion again and merged back into traffic, leaving the protection of the awning above as he drove back out into the rain. Having only glimpsed the map for a few moments, Naoya had already decided on his new direction.
Whoever else was looking for Nishijima, they’d already covered the north end of town. There was probably an important fact about this whole situation hidden in that piece of information, but Naoya didn’t have the time to consider it, nor did he believe that he could have put the larger picture together based on the little information he was given. However, logic dictated that if Nishijima’s other pursuers had already swept the north, that meant they would surgically cover the middle and western parts of Sin Ward and gradually move down to the southern coast. That being the case, Naoya opted to stay ahead of them.
He headed south, away from the Temptation District that served as the beating heart of Sin Ward, where the tallest towers cast eternal night around them while promising endless revelry. He left behind Decadence, as well, where Ichinose and a thousand other men operated their own dens of vices. On the southern end of Sin Ward was the Ambition District, which ran from west to east across the coast, stopped only by the waters of the Sanzu.
Contrary to its name, Ambition wasn’t the home of the captains of industry or the politicians that endlessly dumped their money into Sin Ward. Instead, Ambition was the proletariat sector of the city, where the countless men and women that staffed and serviced Sin’s hives of scum and villainy lived when they weren’t working at the behest of their masters. Free of the need to constantly market and tempt visitors, Ambition was allowed to be a more conventional sector of the metropolis.
The towering, rectangular monoliths that had been erected in mass in the founding of Yōgai-shima had been uniformly cut down in the years since Sin Ward established itself. Here, in Ambition, those buildings had been replaced by new ones. Often still hard, angular, and fashioned from concrete and iron, the forest of buildings that made up Ambition nonetheless still had more individuality than the mass-produced buildings that had been laid down before them.
Red brick and grey stone seemed to be common smart-fabric skins to cover the two-dozen story apartments that competed to blot out the sky. Bars and clubs could still be seen on every other street corner, but they were no competition for their gaudy cousins uptown, and instead they maintained a quieter presence, lacking the twenty-four-hour escapism the rest of Sin Ward promised.
The streets still had pedestrians walking through the rain, but unlike the corporate drones that walked in herds through the storm without regard, the people of Ambition were sparser and lacking direction. Many clustered around bus terminals in the road, others walked solitarily through the rain. Buses were just as frequent on the roads as private vehicles, and rail cars sped above ground and in-between buildings, the squealing of their wheels adding to the constant noise of the traffic and the storm.
Reaching the south coast, Naoya drove east, following the map to find the nearest point highlighted on the map. To his right, the dark sea stretched out beneath a grey sky all the way to the southern horizon. Somewhere, Naoya knew that Japan was out there, though the distance between the archipelago and Yōgai-shima was so vast that nothing of it could be seen. In fact, nothing of the outside world was visible from Yōgai-shima’s shores, save for one exception.
Connected to the southern coast of Yōgai-shima by a bridge was another artificial island, perhaps half the size of Sin Ward itself. Looking at it from the coast, it appeared to be nothing more than a massive silver dome that rose above the waters of the Yōgai-shima bay. The rounded shell was covered in grime whipped up from the furious wind and waves, the product of years of abandonment. A terrible hole had been blasted in the top of the dome, through which rain poured into the interior. It was called “Rakuen,” or something like that.
Apparently, the inside of the dome was fitted with the latest holographic and augmented reality technology, through which the interior of the island could appear and feel like anywhere else on Earth. Those that were lucky enough to see it in its heyday remembered Rakuen as a fantasy land where dreams became reality, but that dream wasn’t to last. The self-contained amusement park had been victim to some kind of catastrophe which had blown the hole in its ceiling and ultimately resulted in the abandonment of the entire facility.
No one rightly knew exactly what it was that caused the scuttling of Rakuen, though there were countless stories told about it on the streets. Many people inevitably pointed their fingers at the Bureau, claiming that they were involved in whatever happened on that fateful day, and the reasons they put forward ran the gamut from well-intentioned but destructive, to outright malicious. Whatever the truth was, Rakuen had been left to rot in the sea, ignored by the city at large, becoming a silver gravestone sitting in the water.
Naoya used the broken shell of Rakuen as a landmark in tandem with the map Ichinose had sent him. Up and down Ambition Ward were a variety of different bars, strip clubs, and cabarets, though they were closed during the daylight hours. He passed those establishments by; if Nishijima was really so devoted to getting his rocks off, he wasn’t going to be hanging around outside a closed bar in the early morning. Instead, he’d go somewhere he could get what he wanted regardless of the time of day, and that’s where Naoya was heading.
Sin Ward was filled with “dark spots.” Tsukuyomi had been the first one: the tower that stretched into the heavens had a sort of field around it that filtered out the daylight, leaving it and the cluster of smaller buildings in its shadow wrapped in perpetual night. Within unending darkness, Tsukuyomi became known as a place of infinite revelry, where men and women partied to celebrate the end of the world. Eventually, other spaces in Sin Ward would attempt to mimic the allure of Tsukuyomi, covering city blocks beneath roofs and domes that concealed them from the sun.
Ambition had one such night spot on its eastern edge, near the running waters of the White-Mountain Sanzu. There were five likely spots marked on the map within the boundary of that singular stretch of night-covered city, which meant it would be easy for a man like Nishijima to get lost in a place like that, and still get his perverse needs met. It was a fine place to look for a needle in a city-sized haystack, but a question lingered in the back of Naoya’s mind.
“What do I do if I actually find him?”
Nishijima didn’t look like much of a fighter, at least, from the photos Ichinose had provided. Judging by what the soapland manager said, he wasn’t expecting Nishijima to actually put up a fight. If anything, the man seemed like a coward well-practiced in the art of running away. However, none of that eased Naoya’s discomfort with the situation, nor did it make it clear what it was he was supposed to do. If he could lay hands on Nishijima, he’d no doubt he could subdue him. The question was, did Naoya really want to do that?
Naoya worked out in his spare time as a form of stress relief, when living trapped in a tight, concrete cube became too difficult for him to deal with. While Suzume would never let Naoya join a gym or visit a dojo, he’d been drawn to martial arts and cage fighting as another kind of hobby. He’d practiced basic drills he found on the net, and imitated what he’d seen professionals do, and those rudimentary fighting skills had been polished by the occasional street fight in Sin Ward when Juzo or another punk thought Naoya looked like a mark.
Naoya was confident in his physicality to see him through most situations, but he never once felt the desire to hurt someone. Confrontation was something to be avoided in his mind, and his size and meager fighting skills were something to be used as a deterrence, rather than to push other people around. Now, he was being asked to be the bully on someone else’s behalf, and he couldn’t shake his distaste for the situation he’d put himself in, no matter how he rationalized it.
“If I find this guy, it’s not like I can just tie him up and sling him over the back of my bike,” Naoya talked himself through the situation as he continued to drive. “I’m not a bounty hunter: I lay a single hand on this guy, and I’m the one who gets the police called on them. I can’t afford that, no matter what.
“Maybe I corner him and called Ichinose? If he sends someone over, maybe they can drag him back. I don’t know if I’d get paid what I was promised if I involved someone else, though. What if whoever Ichinose sends over tries to teach Nishijima a lesson, or make an example out of him? I don’t know if I can just stand there and watch that.”
“I’ll just talk to him,” Naoya shook his head, as though his better judgement was already trying to tell him that his solution wasn’t going to work. “I’ll impress on him the nature of the situation. He’s got a million cronies looking for him and he’s over a hundred grand in debt. He has to know how bad this looks. I just need to convince him to pay Ichinose back, and then I’m gone. No one needs to get hurt.”
“We’ll just talk,” Naoya said to himself again, trying to assure himself that the situation would be so easy to handle.
Through the cascading rain, Naoya saw a domed shape rise up on his left, looking almost like an arena. Despite its appearance, it wasn’t any stadium, but a private refuge for those that couldn’t leave the night behind. The complex was large enough to cover ten city blocks, obscuring all trace of what happened inside from the rest of Sin Ward. Taking a left-hand turn, Naoya wove through the city streets and headed toward the sheltered structure.
Leading into the dome was a four-lane road, two coming and two going. Both lanes were empty, save for the approaching Naoya, which seemed to say to him that everyone that wanted to hide inside had long since done so, and no one else was interested in joining the party. Naoya slowed as he approached the open gates, which stood quiet and abandoned, suggesting that no one cared to police visitors anymore.
Driving through the opening, Naoya left the grey sky behind as he headed into darkness. For the first few seconds, Naoya felt like he was driving into a tunnel. The sound of the wailing wind and crashing thunder faded with each second that Naoya moved forward, replaced only with the hum of his bike’s engine echoing off the walls and the whisper of air moving through the passage. The light from outside faded away, leaving Naoya in a momentary darkness.
In that instant, Naoya felt that same trepidation flowing through him that he felt inside the brighter halls of the FAIR Insurance Agency. Unable to see the floors, the walls, or the ceiling, Naoya’s mind told him that the space around him was collapsing, pressing down on him invisibly. He fought that primal fear nestled into his consciousness, trying to hold it back with reason and logic. It was a losing battle, but he needed to fight it only long enough to reach his destination.
Out from the darkness ahead, Naoya heard something. A deep, bass, rhythmic beat. As he drew closer, other sounds joined the music, ushering Naoya into the apocalyptic festival beyond. Emerging out from under some unlit precipice, Naoya entered into the night township proper. High above him, a silver moon hung in the sky, surrounded by a sea of stars that stretched in all directions without the smallest cloud in sight. Phantom buildings were projected against the night, whose every window shined with light.
Naoya’s brain struggled with a bizarre, instinctual vertigo as his senses tried to reconcile the conflicting information it had been thrust into. No trace of the storm wracked city of Yōgai-shima outside remained, replaced instead by the virtual display of the evening sky and the illusion of a metropolis that didn’t exist surrounding the night parade. Even though his conscious mind knew what had happened, the rest of his brain needed a moment to catch up and reorient itself.
The buildings beneath the barrier stretched up to the roof, trying to appear as tall and towering as they could beneath the artificial sky. Each structure was lined with a metal-exoskeleton, creating jagged, sharp, and harsh spikes that all pointed towards the heavens like spears. Gothic figures leered down at the streets from the rooftops, emulating figures of European and Japanese mythology. Angels and demons watched from around corners, while gargoyles and lion-dogs stood as silent sentries over doorways.
Neon colors flashed in a pandemonium of light, filling the streets with a barrage of clashing incandescence. Naoya had spent enough time on the streets of Sin Ward to learn that the constant lights were meant as a kind of directional guide. Businesses flashing pink lights advertised fleshly delights, while the blue and green lights signaled bars and alcohol. Yellow lights drew musical performances and parties, and red, the rarest color, signified violence.
Though bloodsport and prostitution were illegal in Yōgai-shima, there was no one in this dark sector of the city to enforce those laws. Over the past decade, the police force of Sin Ward slowly disintegrated, and the remaining few officers were spread thin and easily convinced to turn blind eyes to any situation. While Naoya had been lucky enough to have a squad car appear to prevent a fight from breaking out earlier this morning, he wouldn’t be so lucky underneath the false sky. Police didn’t come to places like this.
Instead, the dark sector had its own peace-keepers. Men in neon masks walked down the streets and guarded entrances of private businesses. Some of them openly carried clubs or knives, which they brandished without reserve, but the jaded residents of the black city seemed indifferent to the street toughs on all sides.
Naoya slowed as he rode down the streets, painfully aware of how out of place he was. He kept his eyes down and avoided eye contact with other drivers or pedestrians, not wanting to invite confrontation. However, he couldn’t avoid staring as he watched what appeared to be a salaryman walking down the street in his jet-black suit, stumbling on a pair of six-inch neon green heels. Naoya watched as the man in heels staggered past a woman standing on the street corner who was entirely nude, save for glowing bars wrapped around her breasts and groin. The woman was playing a guitar and caterwauling into a microphone, but her voice was lost in the constant sound of music blaring from open windows and doorways.
“Make peace with the time you have left!” a voice to Naoya’s left was somehow able to cut through the din and he turned to see a group of men standing on the street corner opposite the semi-nude performer. There were three men, each of them dressed in the robes of a yamabushi, though they were deliberately torn and blood spattered. Each of the three men wore a different color; black, red, and blue, and each of them wore different masks made to appear as various disfigured monsters. Each one carried a sign in their hand, and though Naoya struggled to see them in the light, he could see the sign carried by the blue-clad ascetic.
The sign featured an open coffin, out of which climbed a grisly moth or butterfly. The insect’s body was fashioned from human bones, with two sets of ribs making up its thorax and abdomen, while multiple pairs of human arms and legs extended from its skeletal torso and braced themselves against the open wooden box. A human skull leered from the sign, red lights painted in its hollow sockets while a black, curling tongue extended from between its teeth. “DEATH” was written in large brushstrokes beneath the coffin, while “REBIRTH” juxtaposed it above the bony wings of the monstruous insect.
“This world has already ended!” one of the three men evangelized his esoteric message, even as neon-masked bouncers surrounded the trio. “Give your lives to the next!”
Naoya watched the apocalyptic cultists for a few seconds, motivated only by a sense of curiosity at the bizarre display before he sped on, leaving the three men who worshipped death to be lost in the visual and audible noise of the city. He fixed his eyes on the map of the dark streets, using it to navigate. Without his Augur, he wondered if he could ever find what he was looking for or even find his way back out again.
The first of Ichinose’s hot spots came into Naoya’s view. It was a short cuboid building with neon flames dancing up the side, and a large metal cage was wrapped around it to make it appear as some kind of medieval torture device. Outside the open doors, oubliettes were suspended on poles while digital projections of scantily clad men and women danced in the confines. A pair of bouncers waited at either side of the door, a man and a woman, both dressed as devils in the costumes of prison wardens.
Naoya brought the bike to a stop on the far end of the street and stared at the building, but he had zero intention of ever going inside. He felt no temptation from the vices on offer, and the sight of the cage outside it made Naoya feel trapped. It reminded him that, no matter how real it might seem, the sky above him was fake and could fall down on him at any moment.
Part of him wanted to go inside, thinking maybe he could find Nishijima, but his claustrophobia wouldn’t allow him to get any closer. The anxiety began to spread as soon as he came to a stop, and his instincts told him to keep moving; moving helped him forget about the walls inching closer to him, but what if Nishijima came by after he left? He didn’t want to risk missing his target, but Naoya was self-aware enough to know that just sitting outside wasn’t a good idea.
He was out of place here, just as he was in the rest of the city, but for different reasons. He was an outsider here not because he was too tall, or because he didn’t dress in business attire, but because he was too normal. He wasn’t dressed in the bright, eye-gouging colors of the people on the streets, and he wasn’t looking to get laid, or find a stiff drink, or be entertained. Here, he was practically ordinary, and ordinary wasn’t welcome.
Naoya kept moving, spurring the Bridge-Runner back into motion. He told himself that it was because he would be less conspicuous if he was in motion, blending in with the traffic, and not because his fears were prodding him with unseen needles about the darkness and pressure of the walls and ceiling. Scanning the map displayed in the corner of his mind, Naoya traced a line through the cross streets between various points, creating a mental route that would allow him to circle between the hotspots Ichinose had put down.
He circled up and down the dark spot, feeling more aimless with each repetition of the cycle. In the span of a few moments, he’d seen more about other people’s kinks that he’d ever wanted to, but he couldn’t look away, for fear of missing the man he was looking for. He paused to let a group of women dressed as schoolgirls cross the street, their uniforms decorated with torn stockings, leather wrist straps and brightly dyed hair. All of them wore glowing masks, and they sauntered casually across the street while carrying pipes and bats. A couple of them waved in his direction and mimed blowing kisses towards him, but Naoya was careful not to acknowledge the gestures, or to even look back at them for more than a moment. Flirtatious as they might have seemed, Naoya felt the quartet was more interested in trouble than fun.
“I feel like I took a wrong turn and ended up driving through someone else’s wet dream,” Naoya thought to himself after the girls had passed. “Maybe Suzume is right about this part of the city.”
Between the constant weather, the noise, and the surplus of drinks, drugs and sex on offer, Naoya wondered what the real allure of this place was. Even an addict could only enjoy so much, right? The vulgarity of the closed off world made Naoya wonder what kept the people here. Didn’t they have lives outside of this cesspit? Didn’t they know the real world still existed outside? But even asking those questions reminded Naoya that he wasn’t really meant to be here.
The constant night sky made it hard for Naoya to keep track of time, but the feeling that he was wasting the day on this wild goose chase intensified with each passing second. He needed to pay rent this month, and there had to be a hundred jobs all over the city that he could get done in a fraction of the time and get paid. He wouldn’t get fifty grand up front, but at least it was guaranteed money. He was close to just calling it quits when he saw something out of place.
A pair of shabbily dressed men in torn pink and yellow flashing coats walked down the street together, carrying bottles in their hands. Naoya had strayed so far from the nearest neon-coated building that there was only a dim flash of red light projected against the nearest block, and the two men were hardly visible save for their glowing attire. He imagined that they were homeless men that had wandered into the dark sector to evade deportation. They were nothing more than a curiosity in Naoya’s mind, just another strange sight in a sequence of things he hadn’t expected to see today, when the two men were suddenly thrust apart.
They were fifty feet away when they were suddenly pushed aside. The two men had been walking abreast when they were momentarily separated by something Naoya couldn’t see. Shouts rang up and down the street, and the two men turned to gesture behind them, waving their fists at. . . what? Naoya focused his gaze on the two homeless men, and the Augur lenses adjusted themselves, brightening his surroundings to see what had happened. The dim light became brighter, and Naoya saw a third man.
Walking down the street, away from the two vagrants was a dark dressed man. Lacking the bright accoutrement of the glow in the dark city around him, he was nearly invisible in the long shadows of artificial night. Evidently, he was walking in the opposite direction of the two men, and he’d pushed them aside with derision rather than let them pass. Even as the two hobos hurled insults at his back, the dark man continued to walk, as though the pair was entirely beneath his notice.
As the Augur brought the pedestrian into sharper relief, Naoya recognized a kindred spirit. This man, too, didn’t belong in Sin Ward. He wasn’t wearing the bright colors, or leather straps and metal spikes, or an outrageous codpiece. He was dressed in a tightly belted dark grey trenchcoat over a dark suit, and he walked with his hands in his pockets, blind and deaf to the world around him.
“Is that. . . ?” Naoya leaned forward on his bike, peering at the stranger as a sense of disbelief clashed with recognition. At the same time, the man in the grey trenchcoat stopped walking and stood on the sidewalk, tensing for motion. He turned to look over his shoulder and Naoya froze.
“Nishijima?” Naoya stared in disbelief as the man he was looking for looked back in his direction. “There’s no way he could know that I’m here.”
There was a tense silence as the two stared each other down. Naoya knew that he was as darkly dressed as Nishijima, sitting on a bike with a quiet engine and halfway down the street. And yet, almost as soon as Naoya looked at him, the man in grey knew it. Was it coincidence? Feeling as though a spotlight was on him, Naoya wasn’t certain what to do, but Nishijima made the first move.
The man in grey sprinted away, bursting into motion, and Naoya instinctively gave chase. The engine of the Bridge-Runner sang, escalating from a gentle hum to a high-pitched whistle as it accelerated. He raced up the street, passing by the two homeless drunks that had slipped back into disregard for the world around them, and bore down on Nishijima within the span of two seconds.
Knowing, perhaps, that Naoya would run him down before he could get to safety, Nishijima took a sharp right turn and darted down an alley, breaking line of sight with the rider chasing him. Nishijima had been out of Naoya’s view for less than a second when he rounded the corner on his bike and could see down into the alleyway. Looking into the dark crevasse between the buildings, Naoya flipped a switch and the bike’s bright headlight turned on, flashing into the gap to reveal nothing.
Anxiety told Naoya not to enter the narrow space, and caution warned him that he could be ambushed from around the tight corners if Nishijima decided to fight back, or if a two-bit thug decided to try and take his ride. Urgency, however, reminded Naoya that Nishijima was putting more distance between them with each and every second, and he reluctantly guided the bike forward. The alley opened into a small, square space between four buildings, with three more narrow passages leading out.
Shining the light of his bike around, Naoya looked for the missing Nishijima, but the man appeared to have vanished without a trace. He left no footprints behind him, no vision of dark figure ducking around a distant corner, no fleeing footsteps echoing down the alley, or the sound of a door slamming. Nothing. Nishijima had disappeared.
“Amazing,” Naoya bemoaned his ever-present bad luck as he looked around at the dark, bare alley, trying to understand what just happened. “This guy isn’t just psychic; he can teleport, too.”
Frustration mounted, clashing with his ever-present anxiety. The distant rumble of constant music created a rhythmic pounding in Naoya’s forehead, and he decided he’d had enough. He backed the bike out of the alley and turned around, choosing to exit the strange perdition he’d willingly ridden into.
He exited onto the north side of the dark sector, and felt a great burden fall away from his shoulders as the grey sky reappeared overhead. Naoya brought the bike to a stop on the side of the road, and whipped off his helmet and goggles, letting the wind and rain play havoc with his hair. All the thunder, and the flashing lightning, and the howling storm felt a thousand times better than being beneath that false sky. The hurricane was real; it was true, and the lie of that ceiling pretending to be a quiet night sickened Naoya more than words could say.
When he finally found himself calm enough to drive again, Naoya rode the bike a few blocks away, having his Augur guide him to a nearby convenience store. He pulled into the rain-slicked parking lot of “The Last Stop,” which featured a colorful sign depicting a smaller version of the very same store beside a paved road that abruptly terminated in a steep cliff. Naoya left his bike sitting under an awning to shelter it from the rain and headed into the store. As he pulled the glass door open, a soft chime sounded overhead to signal the arrival of a new customer.
“Welcome!” the employee was nearly as tall as Naoya with white skin, freckles, and curly red hair. He was clearly a foreigner by birth, which made him a rare sight for Yōgai-shima, which was almost exclusively made up of Japanese natives. Naoya supposed the humble convenience store clerk had a story to tell about how he ended up in this part of the world, but Naoya knew better than to ask about it. He was certain the foreign-born man got more attention than he liked some days, and Naoya didn’t want to ignorantly add to his troubles. Instead, he simply flashed a smile and a nod at the clerk to acknowledge the greeting.
The inside of the convenience store was a pristine white color, with immaculate floors and walls, while the countertops and the sides of the aisle displays were dark green. The counter stood in the right corner opposite the entrance, while a small stand of newspapers and books stood on the right side of the doors. Against the storefront’s long rectangular window was another display, this one also carrying books, along with manga and magazines. In the center of the floorspace were three rows of different items available for purchase, ranging from dry snacks to over the counter medicines. On the far-left wall was the refrigerated section, where sandwiches, drinks, and desserts were stored.
The store was empty, save for Naoya, and he spent several minutes perusing the aisles, and his appetite eventually drew him to the back of the store. He looked over the neatly packaged sandwiches, meat buns, rice balls, and premade meals, trying to decide which one he felt the most in the mood for. Each item appeared to be carefully made with the freshest ingredients and then wrapped neatly in a container to maximize its freshness for the best possible flavor. On the front of each paper wrapper or plastic container was a white and green rendition of the store’s logo with its catchphrase printed beneath it in white letters: “Don’t wait until it’s too late!”
None of it was real, no matter how good it looked. The rows of frozen treats, noodles, and meals were all simply digital projections that looked entirely life-like, or perhaps it was that they looked too good that served to undermine the illusion. It didn’t help that the supposed refrigerated section was hardly cold at all. Looking at the computerized effigy of a sandwich that tickled his appetite, Naoya raised his Augur and swiped it over a sensor next to the holographic display, and the digital image flickered and disappeared. A small slot opened behind the display, releasing a blast of cold air, and an equally small mechanical arm extended itself holding a real sandwich. At almost the same time, Naoya heard the sound of the door opening over his shoulder, and a small chime rang out.
“Welcome!” the clerk greeted the next customer.
“Right on cue,” Naoya thought to himself. Fifty-percent of the time, whenever Naoya entered a convenience store, he was followed by someone. The later in the day it was, the more likely the encounter was to take place, but Naoya never found the interaction to have an entirely predictable set of circumstances, aside from the fact that they only happened in a convenience store or gas station, and the other person never appeared if Naoya was with someone. He didn’t look around to see if his suspicions were correct and chose to focus on the display in front of him. After a few seconds of eyeing the drinks on offer, Naoya was joined by the new customer.
She was on the shorter side, maybe around only five feet tall, and the top of her head barely reached Naoya’s right bicep. The young woman was dressed in a red raincoat that reached down to her thighs, and below that, Naoya could see she wore red leggings with a white strip down the middle of each leg, and a pair of matching red and white sneakers. She made a show of pulling down her hood, revealing a round, cute face with a pointed chin and nose, along with a head of reddish-pink hair that was tied into a braid that dangled over her right ear and over the back of her right shoulder.
Despite the raincoat and hood, Naoya couldn’t help but notice that the young woman that was so casually standing beside him was completely dry. Her shoes left no watery footprints, and her coat didn’t shed a single drop of rainwater. He knew there had to be a thousand ordinary explanations for that, but he couldn’t help but think back to the Inspector he saw on the bike earlier that morning and how the rain fell away from her without explanation.
The young woman made a show of leaning forward slightly, tapping her chin with one pink-pained fingernail, as if trying to decide what she wanted. Naoya knew from experience that the stranger bought things maybe a third of the time whenever the meeting occurred, and he couldn’t say why that was. He didn’t ask why, or even say anything when she walked up, and she didn’t say anything either.
Despite meeting this way over three dozen times, neither of them greeted the other immediately. Rather, they both kept silent until one of them found something to say. That said, the silence between them wasn’t awkward; if anything, Naoya imagined that actors on a stage felt the same way he did, waiting for a cue in the script to begin their interaction. Determined not to break the unspoken rules of the meeting, Naoya chose to focus on buying himself a drink.
His eyes wandered over the drink section, half of which was made up of unique Yōgai-shima flavors. A black can of Ghoul with a skeletal face etched into it leered at him, a tagline beneath it promising that it was “made from bones, to build stronger bones!” The words “Zero percent appetite! One hundred percent energy!” were written on a red can of Overclock, which featured a speedometer racing past a hundred miles per hour. “Liquid Meals packed with genuine flavor and real ingredients!*” filled several different spaces in the display, each can having a different color with a rendition of various meals printed on the sides, ranging from bowls of miso soup to pork cutlets. Naoya was almost curious enough to try one, but the large asterisk made him think twice: he didn’t want to know where the proteins and vitamins in those drinks came from, and he certainly didn’t want them in his body.
“You know,” the young woman observed Naoya as he slid his Augur over another display, and a mechanical arm deposited a can of green tea for him to take. “Back in Japan, stores weren’t like this at all.”
“Oh yeah?” Naoya prompted the young woman, still not looking directly at her, while he turned the can of tea over to look at the back.
“In Japan, the stores used to have everything up front for people to look at,” the young woman eyed the entire refrigerated section. “You didn’t need to swipe your credit card or your ID just to get a sandwich.”
“I can’t imagine how much food got stolen on a daily basis,” Naoya mused, but the young woman smiled and shook her head.
“In Japan? No,” she corrected him gently. “Crime was always very low. Shoplifting almost never happened.”
“That sounds like somewhere far away,” Naoya commented, dourly, and the young woman sighed, almost wistfully, no doubt thinking of another place and time.
“Yōgai-shima isn’t Japan,” Naoya reminded himself of the truism that was spoken every so often. Though the manufactured island was the product of Japanese engineering and determination in the face of human extinction, the island wasn’t really Japan. Too much was different, and too much had been lost in the Downfall for things to ever go back to the way they had before. It had only been ten years, but the aftershocks of that momentous event seemed to have fractured everything that Japan once stood for, down to the soul of each individual.
The culture of the survivors had shifted, and the times, too, had changed, along with what it meant to be “Japanese.” During the first half of the nineteenth century, Japan had been a nationalistic empire, and, during the latter half, it became a nation of proud pacifists. Both of those cultural identities had vanished, replaced with a mentality that was often much more violent, much more short-sighted, and thoroughly hedonistic. Naoya had seen more of that world today than he could consciously recall of Honshu, or Japan as a whole.
With that depressing thought, Naoya turned away from the cold food aisle and moved back towards the storefront with the display of magazines and bargain bin films. He looked down at the assortment of products on offer, but he didn’t put any conscious effort into actually considering them. Instead, his eyes floated over to the window, where he stared into the storm.
Over the tops of the nearby buildings, he could still see the shape of the dark sector looming in the distance, and his thoughts returned to the tumult of noise and shapes he saw within. Much as he wanted to forget them, he couldn’t ignore that he’d seen Nishijima there. He almost wanted to put the memory down to delusion, but he couldn’t shake the reality of it. He’d almost caught the man, but he’d somehow slipped away. Part of him wanted to wash his hands of the whole affair, and Naoya realized that was probably the wiser fraction of his persona, but something else, something prideful and hostile, felt slighted by the fact he’d been eluded so easily.
“I spotted him first,” he tried to console himself on his failure. “I had the upper hand, but I wasted it. I lost focus, and when I actually saw him, I let myself be surprised. That’s how he got away.”
Despite the narrative Naoya was crafting in his head, he couldn’t explain how Nishijima had instantly known he was being watched, or how the man had made such an easy escape. Naoya didn’t let that bother him, though.
“Next time, I’ll know better,” he told himself. “Next time, I won’t give him a chance to run.”
Naoya surprised himself with that chain of thought. Next time? Would there be a next time?
“Looking for something to watch?” the girl had reappeared again, standing now at Naoya’s left. She would follow him until he left the store, but she would always give him a few second lead before taking a circuitous route and just so happen to end up wherever he was standing. She tapped her finger to her chin as she looked over the selection of movies on offer, perhaps thinking that Naoya was genuinely perusing.
“Conbeni-chan.”
That was the nickname Naoya had given her. At first, he assumed she was some kind of company mascot or hired actress who approached lonely men and persuaded them to buy things; it was a weird idea, but weirder things happened in Yōgai-shima. However, Naoya had been to a number of different gas stations, convenience stores, and small pharmacies, and Conbeni-chan could show up at each of them. After that, he began to wonder whether or not she was some kind of AI construct that projected through an emitter of some kind. It explained her ability to show up at random times, but not her ability to open doors or handle objects, nor did it explain why she appeared when she did. That left two options in Naoya’s mind.
Either Conbeni-chan was an illusion, or she was stalking him. Neither option sat right. If the young woman was a figment of Naoya’s imagination, then she was a delusion the entire world suffered under, seeing that she interacted with the store clerk and other customers sometimes. Putting aside the notion that everything was just an idea in his own head, Naoya looked hard at the girl standing at his left.
She wasn’t someone you pictured when you thought about stalkers, even the rare female sort. She wasn’t inquisitive or prying about Naoya’s life, nor was she flirty or controlling. She was entirely casual about their encounters, as though Naoya was just a neighbor, and the two happened to meet by coincidence while out in the city. She never said or did anything untoward, and if their meetings happened just a little less often than they did, Naoya could almost rationalize the occurrences as a coincidence.
“It’s kind of funny,” the young woman in red mused. “Looking for something to entertain yourself in Sin Ward, of all places. Isn’t there enough to do out there?”
“Sin Ward isn’t really my scene,” Naoya assured her and Conbeni-chan gave him a scrutinizing look.
“Really?” she turned and looked out the window, looking up and down the street. “I think a lot of men say that when they get caught in this neck of the woods.”
“I’m only here for work,” Naoya explained, although he didn’t know why. “I’m not here to indulge.”
“Mmmmhmmm,” the girl rolled her eyes in a coy way that told him he was being teased.
“Do you work around here?” Naoya asked, nodding out past the window.
“Me? No,” the young woman shook her head. “I work in Central.”
That was a trap. In any ordinary conversation, you’d be expected to ask for more details, but not here. Naoya wasn’t allowed to ask about Conbeni-chan‘s personal life beyond what she offered, and that included her name. If he did so, she would end the conversation there.
“So does my girlfriend,” Naoya invoked the “G word”.
In most circumstances, if a woman was flirting with Naoya, the invocation of his better half would prompt a retreat. Most tried to gracefully back out of the conversation, while some women got offended, and assured him that not only had they NOT been flirting with him, but they also had boyfriends. An even smaller minority continued to flirt after he mentioned Suzume, which Naoya took as a sign to avoid those women in the future. Conbeni-chan, of course, didn’t really fall into any of those categories.
She was coy, teasing, and friendly, but never really crossed into flirting. She never complimented his looks, never tried to get his phone number, and never tried to set up a date. Any mention of Suzume was simply acknowledged as a fact of Naoya’s life that Conbeni-chan never challenged or seemed intimidated by.
“Does she know you work in a place like this?” the young woman affected a judgmental tone, though it wasn’t genuine. “If I were her, I wouldn’t let you step foot in this part of this city.”
Naoya noted the fact that the young woman allowed herself to enter Sin Ward but ignored the playful hypocrisy.
“It’s not like she can stop me,” Naoya scoffed. “I’m a grown man that can make his own choices.”
“That sounds exactly like something a little boy would say,” Conbeni-chan affected a teasing tone, and rolled her eyes.
“And that sounds exactly like something my girlfriend would say,” Naoya shook his head. “Women just can’t miss an opportunity to tell men how we should act and what maturity looks like to try and make us feel small. And if we capitulate? We still lose, and we get told we don’t take charge enough.”
“Being in a relationship isn’t a power struggle,” Conbeni-chan turned to face him, folding her arms. “It’s a mutual partnership. It’s not about winning and losing; it’s about both sides sacrificing for each other to the betterment of the relationship.
“Showing maturity as a man means being able to understand and predict what your partner needs ahead of time. Just because your girlfriend doesn’t say she doesn’t like something that you do doesn’t mean that it doesn’t bother her; she’s just chosen not to say anything to compromise with your pride. Over time, though, those countless compromises will add up like overdue bills, and if your girlfriend takes a hard look at all those sacrifices she’s made and sees that you haven’t made any of your own? It’s not going to look good for you.”
“Overdue bills?” Naoya repeated the words, rubbing his chin in thought. “I know a guy with a lot of those.”
“It’s just a turn of phrase,” Conbeni-chan waved a hand, trying to dismiss the notion so that Naoya could focus on her fundamental point, but he was too far down another rabbit trail. “Think of a romantic relationship like a journey; you and your lover are working together towards a single destination. In order to get there together, you both need to know where the other wants to go, and you need to plan ahead of time to get there.”
“If I knew where Nishijima was going ahead of time, he would be a thousand times easier to catch,” Naoya ruminated on Conbeni-chan‘s words, though they were processed through the lens of his current fixation. “But what does he want? More sex?”
But intuition told Naoya that was the wrong conclusion. From the beginning, nothing seemed right to Naoya about what he was told regarding Nishijima. More than just not looking the part, the man in the grey trenchcoat didn’t act the way Ichinose said he did. If someone like that really owed as many people as Ichinose claimed, then the safest course of action would be to hide out until the heat died down, or to move to another part of the city. Instead, Nishijima was walking the streets, knowing that he had a bullseye on his back: what made a man act that way? It was more than just trying to get a perverse itch scratched, he knew that much.
“Are you still listening?” Conbeni-chan asked, noting that Naoya was lost in pensive thought.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” Naoya admitted, though he didn’t elaborate on what exactly she’d helped him with.
“Good!” the young woman clasped her hands together, apparently pleased. She looked over the selection of films arranged before them and then reached out to pluck one from the shelf. “Let me give you some homework.”
“Excuse me?” Naoya did a double-take, glancing at the woman in red now holding a film case against the chest of her coat.
“This movie isn’t just a movie,” the woman warned him, her eyes large and expressive.
“Is it going to curse me if I watch it?” Naoya asked wryly, but his joke went unappreciated.
“No!” the young woman huffed, clearly offended. “It’s an experience! It’s a litmus test for any relationship!”
“One movie does all that?” Naoya reached a hand out to be given the film case, but the girl turned away, holding the movie case tighter, perhaps not liking the skepticism in his voice.
“This movie,” the girl looked down towards her feet, a fragile expression on her features. “I watched it a long time ago with someone very special to me. It taught us lessons about love that we never knew before.”
“It sounds like quite the adventure,” Naoya humored the young woman, who reluctantly turned back towards him.
“This movie can really put you through your paces,” she continued to sing its praises, holding it up as though watching the movie were some Herculean task. “If you aren’t ready for it, you may not understand it.”
“I think my girlfriend and I can handle it,” Naoya assured her, holding his hand out again for the movie case. Conbeni-chan scrutinized Naoya with a careful eye for several seconds, but slowly and gently held the item out for him to take. He delicately pulled the case from between her fingers and he turned it over. A cynical part of him expected that he was on the receiving end of a long-winded joke, and the movie would turn out to be a comedy or a raunchy film. Instead, the movie’s cover simply featured a man and woman standing back to back in front of a black background.
“Collision,” Naoya read the title aloud.
“It’s a Shimono Kojiro film,” the young woman stepped around to Naoya’s left to look at the cover with him.
“Wasn’t he busted for being a sex pest or something?” Naoya wondered aloud.
“Is that a deal-breaker?” Conbeni-chan asked, her eyes large and seeking approval.
“No,” Naoya shrugged. “If this movie is as great as you say, then I suppose I can separate art from the artist.”
“You won’t regret it!” the woman in red promised. “I think you’ll really enjoy it.”
“I hope so,” Naoya agreed, still feeling uncertain about what he’d agreed to.
“You can tell your girlfriend I said, ‘you’re welcome,’” Conbeni-chan giggled and Naoya gave her a questioning look.
“You’re welcome from who?” he asked, pointedly. “I don’t even know your name.”
The woman smiled and cocked her head to one side, playfully.
“That’s a silly question,” she wagged a finger at him and stepped away, signaling the end of the encounter. Naoya watched as she moved away to one of the other aisles, where she would peruse the store until after Naoya left, but she wouldn’t re-engage with him from that point on. There was nothing stopping him from trying to talk to her, of course, but he sensed that he would be breaking the rules in doing so and decided against it.
He paid for his food and drink, along with the movie foisted on him, and then left, not looking back to see if the girl in red was still there. Getting back on his bike, Naoya drove to a spot where he could observe the sheltered dark area of Sin Ward from a distance. He had no intention of going back in, but he couldn’t help but wonder what Nishijima had been doing there.
“It’s all about knowing what the other person wants ahead of time, right?” Naoya twisted the young woman’s words of wisdom to suit a very different situation.
If he knew what Nishijima wanted, he could catch him.
Soon, the World Will End 